Map-Me

Map-Me Introduction

Map-Me ("Mapping Meanings") is an online Public Participation GIS (PPGIS)
for the creation of online surveys for the collection of 'vague' spatial data. Based
upon a "spray and say" approach, Map-Me uses an 'airbrush' interface
(the "Spraycan") to allow participant's to "spray-paint" on to a Google Map,
in order to answer vague spatial questions (e.g. "Where you think...?") without being
required to artificially enforce precise boundaries onto their data.

The University of Manchester, through the School of Environment, Education and Development.

Use of Map-Me is free at point of use with acknowledgement of the authors (Jonny Huck, Steve Carver, Alan Watson) and the US Forest Service.

Map-Me Data

Map-Me uses a custom "Multi-Point-and-Attribute" data format, whereby each individual dot of paint is
stored independently in the database, and is linked to several attributes. Please see the Huck et al. (2014)
paper (below) for more information.

These data can be used to explore a wide variety of personal geographical information, such as in the below figure, which
shows areas that are perceived as safety and unsafe around the city of Lancaster, UK according to a survey of 100 people:

Map-Me Team

Jonny Huck

Jonny is a Lecturer in Geographical Information Science at the University of Manchester.
He has extensive experience in geospatial software development and cartographic design, and his interests
include the representation of vague geographical entities and novel approaches to cartography.
He is the lead software developer for Map-Me.

Stephen Carver

Steve is a Geographer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds. He has 25 years' experience in the field
of GIS and multi-criteria evaluation with special interests in wild land, landscape evaluation and public
participation. He has worked extensively on the development of wild land mapping and evaluation methodologies
and has tested and applied these across a variety of locations and spatial scales including Scotland, England,
Britain, Europe, and the USA.

Alan Watson

Alan joined Forest Service Research in 1988 and has directed the social science program both before and
since transformation of the US Forest Service Wilderness Research Work Unit to the Aldo Leopold Wilderness
Research Institute. Alan has represented the Leopold Institute three times on Fulbright appointments (Finland,
Russia and Brazil), serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Wilderness, and he represents
the Leopold Institute and partner agencies on the Executive Committee of the World Wilderness Congress.

Fernando Sanchez-Trigueros

Fernando is a Research Assistant in the Department of Geography at the University of Leeds. He specializes in
providing software functionality for the synthesis, retrieval, mapping and analysis of vague information out
of Public Participation GIS data, focusing on the processing of data collected by the Map-Me PPGIS tool. In
so doing he is combining theoretical, methodological and technical principles of computational linguistics,
GIScience and fuzziness for the implementation of multimodal geodata structures equipped with text, image and
geospatial attributes.

Acknowledgements

Grateful thanks to Dave Gullick and Dan Burnett for their invaluable help in the development of this software.

Contact

If you would ike more information about Map-Me, need assistance with its use, or would like to request new
features, please contact
Jonny Huck
.